Please. I plead with you. Live deeply. You may be young now but it goes. Fast. It is a breath.

[slightlv]

11. I heartily agree life should be an adventure!

In my younger days, it was hard. A single mother on $700 month (and $100/mo child support). Fresh out of the Air Force with no real world experience except as military police. I already knew I didn't want to make law enforcement a career. But at least I could type fast and accurately.

Got into computers during the days of WANG and the old Tandy PCs. Ended up making tech my career field, and I loved just about every minute of it. The old days were different than they are today. Back then, you made a new discovery or fixed a novel problem and you shared it with everyone around you. Knowledge and information wasn't something to be held close to your chest. It was to be shared so everyone could learn. We had fun back in those days with these new-fangled machines.

I even built a system to run a FIDO net BBS. Some 20 years later, I finally admitted the Internet was stealing everyone and shut it down. But, oh... the batch files I wrote to run that machine! And every single batch file was stored in a directory named /Belfry! I still found a way to be creative.

BUT... because I loved what I was doing, I sank my life into it whole-heartedly. I became identified with my skills on computers. During those work years, I let a lot of adventure slide by me. I was the main breadwinner in the family, but my salary level rarely approached $50k/year. I was a woman. And the whole "tech is a man's field" held true in the institutions I ended up working for. Trying to constantly make ends meet left me ill-prepared for retirement. A small annuity after working for the DoD (which is eaten up by insurance costs) and Social Security has left my former dreams for retirement in the dust.

If I could offer a couple of words of advice to the young (which I've already given to my daughter), it is to not allow your work to define you. Make sure you have at least one avocation which means, maybe, even more than your vocation. Also, travel while you are young. Don't put it off!!! I wanted to spend my retirement years traveling the world... or at least the nation. Now, with little extra money, and a debilitating chronic illness, travel is pretty much out of the question. But oh, how I always wanted to go back to the "old country".. Ireland... where my maternal line originated. Don't think you'll do it once you retire. Too much can happen in the intervening years. Do it now while you are young!!

The one avocation I had, rescuing critters and rehoming them, was a passion of mine. Truth be known, it still is. I'm just less able to do it now. But it has left me with a household of "babies" of my own who give me love and comfort, even on the worst days. Forced into retirement due to disability, I went from serving my National Guard and Reserve students to serving my new masters... the four legged kind.